My Email to Steve Jobs

So I had a lot of spare time and decided to email Steve Jobs. Here is what I wrote:

Hi Steve,

Webcams are cheap, but are low quality devices. You cannot manually zoom and electronic zoom causes loss of pixel. Camcorders and Video cameras are expensive because of the storage, battery and processing power needed. Why not build a quality webcam that can give as good a picture quality as a video camera? You could just plug it in to a laptop and get quality video utilizing the laptops battery, memory and processing power.

Freelancing as an Author on Constant Content & Associated Content

Freelance writing can be a great way to make some money and I am delving into this with all the heart and gusto of an adventurer. I can already imagine myself as the next great writer to grace the horizons, concocting new and earth-shattering new articles while making heaps of gold and silver.

Associated Content and Constant Content appear to be the best in terms of payouts. Let's see how this venture works out!

Does ExitJunction harm Google's Organic SEO?

I naively believed that Exit Junction was a cure all in terms of making ad revenues and not using website real estate. After a few days of using however, I saw my organic google referrals plummet. while, I do not have enough data to make a definite statement about this, I have a strong suspicion its because of Exit Junction. As a result, I've taken it down.

Essentially, with Exit Junction, you are f&%king with Google, and its just not smart to do that given how dependent everyone is on Google. When, by pressing the back button a googler does not go back to Google, you are crossing some kind of a red line. You are crossing into Google's territory, and google will react like the Arctic wolf in guarding it (the reference comes from my memory of the book Never Cry Wolf).

Looks Like Worthpoint Bought GoAntiques.com

I always thought GoAntiques.com was the stronger site, but as it turns out, Worthpoint bought GoAntiques.com! That should be very interesting. I think Worthpoint now has the weight to be viable in the marketplace in the foreseeable future. I also think that Will Seippel was smart in making this decision as Worthpoint had pretty much hit a dead end. 

Personally, I'm still not happy with the format of Worthpoint.com. Everything "seems" right, but somehow the feel of the website is lacking. Goantiques.com, even if it looks half a generation behind, still has that "feel" of someplace people would go on a regular basis. I wonder if my feel comes out in stats. lets see.

And the verdict from Quantcast seems that I am correct! Gut instincts quantified. Monthly page views per person for Worthpoint is 3.0 for the US while for GoAntiques.com its a whopping 7.49 more than double that for Worthpoint.

From the little I know of the two personalities, Will Seippel and Jim Kamnikar, I think Jim would be better of running the day to day operations while Will doing the wheeling and dealing. But I think its worked out the other way round.

Anyways, random thoughts from a nobody!

Blogs I read

nevblog.com

Here is a blog I really enjoy reading of a young entrepreneur of South Asian origin. He works out of Austin, Texas and does everything from eCommerce (his forte) to investing (buy and hold type).


kirkreport.com

Here is a day trading guru who lives for day trading. Has some really in depth research. Interestingly, was never formally trained in this!

Lucky on Not Having PBR Yet

I think my strategy of waiting till Nov/Dec is paying off and not having joined the bottom callers in the past few months. I might even push it back further to the very end of December. Meanwhile, am also considering buying SBS - another Brazilian company into water and sewage. I think this could be a good buy given the climate. 

Okay So Petrobras is Down and Out below $30

But I did say I'll wait till November / December which pretty much saved me some serious heartache. I think it will be fun to see where it is headed. I am tempted to buy it now but I want to stick to my original plans and buy it in November / December.

The valuation is crazy and its probably pricing in the Brazilian government taking serious steps to get to all that oil. Also, Oil prices of course! But I think that oil prices will get back to about $100 pretty fast. This is because demand for oil today is extremely diverse and developing nations are increasingly more important, particularly in their numerical strength. Stock market bubbles will not effect them too adversely and Asian economies as well as Latin American economies are bound to grow. I think though that Asian economies are likely to have a far harder time given their export orientation. I think its important for them to find their own market and trade between themselves more as their consumer base matures. If they can do this, they will be fine, if they can't then they'll go to the dogs. I am not taking that risk until I see improvement in those numbers.

I think I might look more closely into GE as a ballast for PBR in my portfolio.